I get the sentiment here, but AO3 writers tend to write their fanfic out of love for the IP they're writing about. Netflix etc writers showing contempt for the IP they're adapting is far worse.
to be completely fair, many of the best stories are fanfics anyway. Most of disney's movies, Sandman, league of extraordinary gentlemen, etc. hell you could even consider Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy fanfics.
I think I remember a director/writer/actor talk about it before (maybe Damon or Affleck) and they said that the reason why so many adaptations have absolutely nothing to do with the source material, is because these scripts always end up in the hands of people who have desperate been trying to push their own original stories for countless years, but no one ever wants anything to do with anything remotely fantasy/scifi/whatever unless its an established franchise. They know this and tbey finally have someone paying attention to them, so of course now they're going to say, screw the source material, lets hijack this and use the property as a skin to finally tell my vision and my story and get paid, the studios won't even notice or care.
I’ve never seen that talk but that was exactly the impression I got from the Halo series. Take away the Halo props and skins and it’s basically a completely different story, with characters that are nothing like their namesakes and plot riffs that go in opposite directions. Without the skins I’m not sure I’d see any link at all.
Of course the studios end up caring when the viewings tank and they can it. Then the writers complain.
Preach! I've read every Halo book, except the YA stuff, and this show is an abomination. I have come across 2 dudes I work with who like the show but that is because they know nothing about Halo.
We're expecting LOTR treatment, 90's Super Mario and Double Dragon BS! I don't know how MS allowed this to happen with arguably one of their best-selling IPs. Couldn't be me in charge. I would've cancelled the live-action show and moved to animation to speed things up. We could've had something like Netflix Castlevania. However, it probably would've ended up like Netflix Tomb Raider cartoon.
On some level I can see the reasons why they went for stuff that was a bit more 'tame', but then they just deviated for no reason.
One of the things I liked about the Forward Unto Dawn series is that it kind of riffed on comments from the books about how officially SPARTAN Mjolinir armour is all enclosed due to their mission profile, which often means in hostile atmospheres.... but part of is down to avoid freaking normal soldiers out, as the SPARTAN-IIs (at that point at least) would have looked like 7 foot tall 170Kg greek gods... but with teenage faces and creepy intense stares due to their lack of need for blinking and implants etc. If they were going to deviate from the base game stuff, at least take it in a rational direction.
Instead we got master cheeks, flood was just zombies, and randomly made Miranda Keyes into her mother. Like, wat?
Its really funny that both foundation and wheel of time were mentioned, because the "real" answer is "Rings of slop" but its so shit everyone just sort of forgets it exists
It was honestly starting to feel like the direction WoT show was taking in s3 was shaping up to be quite an enjoyable show if they finished it. I just wanted to see Dumais Well! Well... ok quite a bit more but just that battle alone would have been glorious.
I think Foundation isn't really a good example tho.
A bunch of old men, scheming and banging their chest about maths wouldn't have made for great TV and replacing your entire cast every couple episodes is obviously a big no-no in TV :D
I don't mind that they made changes to the story in general, obviously Foundation would be a horrendous page-to-screen adaptation. It's the opposite of character focused, after all. I don't hate that they keep characters from era to era, but I think it would have been cool to showcase a ton of good actors as time went on.
What I do find incredibly annoying, is that 80% of the show is just shit they straight up added. Exactly what the post I replied to was talking about. Fucking clone emperors? Spacers? Multidimensional magic devices? Black hole weapons? Those aren't changes to foundation, those are a different story altogether.
As soon as I realized the majority of the producers efforts were being spent on the clone emperor story, I realized this was yet another case of someone who was fucking desperate to tell their story, not the story they've been hired to adapt to screen.
It's not that the clone stuff is a bad story, it's quite compelling. It's just not... Foundation. The thing I actually wanted to watch.
Also to the point of switching out actors, Netflix did that with Altered Carbon where they replaced the lead actor with another as it's how the sci-fi tech in the series works and the show immediately imploded.
Some plot points are not adaptable to an enjoyable watch for most people. Sure, the hardcore fans might understand, but the vast majority of viewership would leave.
Beats them. If I ever got a chance I’d be adapting straight from the source literature. Trying to interact with the community. And stay faithful to the games.
First 4 seasons of Game Of Thrones is that (obviously a lot of cutting but that's a limitation of TV) . It's a shame they ran out of source material by S5 onwards
I mean the sept blowing up in the season 6 finale was moments away from happening at the end of the latest book. If I remember right Pycelle just got stabbed by a bunch of children, it’s practically the next scene in the books. There’s still a lot in season 5 and 6 from the books. Almost all of it, really, just with some dumb changes thrown in here and there. (I really hated the Hound/Brienne thing.)
I think GRRM stopped having involvement after S4. Things started branching off in weird ways. I'd definitely say S5 onwards isn't anywhere near the quality adaptation. You are right there was more source material than I remembered though
The last you read of Cersei is immediately after her walk of shame, if I recall it's not Pycelle being stabbed but Tywin's brother, and that was orchestrated by Varys and Connington.
There are tremendous changes made even before that in the show. One of the largest and something we see the consequences of is getting rid of lady stoneheart. That was not a limitation of tv. That was d&d doing their own thing. Same with missing young griff. These aren't minor characters you can just omit
I wonder why none of the suits behind these multi billion dollar companies have not made that connection yet. Surely its cheaper to hire a few people from a game studio or hardcore fans to write a story for you, than having a team with no connection to the source material ruining another show/movie.
Same with actors. Rachel Zagler shitting on the original Snow White was a PR DISASTER on a whole other level. I mean the movie was shit for a thousand reasons, but the lead actress talking crap about the source material is like giving a big middle finger to all fans.
Maybe its nepotism? Writers/Actors know somebody or are someones kid and get their jobs that way? I have no idea, how some people with 0 talent manage to get hired. I am by no means a professional writer and I think even I could make a more faithful movie adaptation than half of hollywoods "Writers"
I chalk up the Zagler thing to an inexperienced artist not knowing that they have to be a team player if they want their career to advance. You don't shit-talk your own folks, and you don't attach politics to a production. The successful people in the industry all know that. Try to find a video of Matt Damon shit-talking anything that he's worked on. No. You say some stuff like, "We tried hard on that movie but it didn't really come together the way that we were hoping for."
The same thing is happening now with Tomi Adeyemi. She is shit-talking her own movie because she's up in her feelings and doesn't know how this game works, and it's literally going to end her Hollywood career.
Idk, Zagler already was in a few movies before Snow White, even had quite a big part in "West side Story" , funnily enough also a quite old story. She MUST have had communication training at some point and shittalking the original material for a movie you are going to star in is probably the worst thing you can do, besides illegal stuff.
I dont know what is happening around Adeyemi, but she is far from new to the general media world. She has published several successful books, idk what she is critizing, but she HAS to know, that nobody in the media world likes to get shit on.
I would understand if someone gets media attention for the first time and accidentally says something bad. Even if its really bad. Especially actors are not exactly cast for how smart they are, its a very physical job after all. But everyone in these positions needs training on what they are allowed to say on day one of their contracts.
Adeyemi has completely divorced herself from the movie, saying that it traumatized her and that she will not watch it. Like she was doing the whole heavy breathing tear-eyed thing in her video.
She has also implied that the star-studded A-list cast they picked was not black enough. Like their skin is literally too light. Colorism, I think she called it.
yup, that's exactly how it came across with the people behind the Witcher tv series. it's let me get a show using an IP to get it greenlit then let me slowly turn it into the thing I wanted to make but no one was interested in.
That it happens again and again and again and studios keep going along with this shit is wild.
Studios are absolutely insane to listen to a pitch that is lets sell a show TO THE FANS then let the creator of the show just piss off every single fan with every decision.
All they need to do is assign an exec or two to actually read the books, then find some people (in that case the writer of the books is a bit of a dick), maybe in this case the writers behind the games, or establish like a focus group of fans and then run scripts by them, when they say "if you absolutely destroy this characters entire story and you allow this massive change in the way the world works it kind of ruins everything and makes no sense and everyone will hate that" then tell the creators to stop with that shit and fix it.
A good example is like how did someone at Disney not tell Rhian like, no you can't just crash into other ships with hyperspace as a weapon and no, leia who has never used the force can not fucking fly in space while seemingly dead and just survive.
Witcher is one thing but Star Wars, how do they give away so much control and let a dude ruin it because he really likes to make every film he makes about subverting expectations and twists. the entire industry is baffling.
Star Wars sequel trilogy had a lot of problems. Rhian Johnson was part of it... But hardly all.
How they should have approached the sequel trilogy:
1. Outline the entire plot for the whole trilogy. Everything that happens needs to be in line with that plot.
2. Find a single director willing to sign on for the entire trilogy.
3. Write the entire script for all three movies.
4. Run script past continuity editors and star wars universe experts to make sure everything is in line with itself and the setting .
5. Now cast the movies and film them back to back to back, with CGI and so on being focused on finishing them in order.
6. Release the movies about a year apart so that there's time for the GI on the later movies to finish up after the first movie is released.
This isn't genius or anything. It's barely even smart. It's just not dumb. Unlike what they did.
I suppose I should have included "don't let JJ Abrams touch an established universe property". Look, Abrams is a great story teller and world builder. But he doesn't use a show bible and he doesn't leave notes about what he's doing, and we should have all learned that he doesn't really do his best work playing in other people's universes from how he handled Star Trek. Yes his Trek movies were fun, but they weren't really Star Trek.
And his total rehash of 'A New Hope' was sad. I can't even remember the actual title for episode 7. But it was Death Star v3.3: "this time it's an actual planet and we somehow suck up an entire star". And while Star Wars has never had much of a relationship with actual science (it's space fantasy opera), retelling the same exact story but even less believable has never been a winning strategy. And Abrams should have done better. I just don't know who I would recommend to direct a star wars movie right now.
sure, they all sucked, but in different ways. JJ deciding that Rey can basically understand and use the force against a guy who has trained for decades in it is absolutely moronic, but the idea someone can defend from the force as a force user doesn't break the universe. Seeing attacks across solar system is absolutely moronic but also more of a this film maker is a fucking moron rather than this broke star wars universe rules.
Leia being 'dead' in space and magically flying back inside is just straight universe breaking stupidity.
I hated each film with a passion. Just certain things particularly in Johnson's film stood out as egregious. JJ is an idiot imo but Rhian seemed to deliberately add things to the film he knew would fuck everyone off. He just didn't care in the slightest the film he was making was part of a greater trilogy or IP.
As you say studios should absolutely do what you said and it's mind boggling that they don't. How much did disney pay for the IP only to immediately go ahead and mismanage the shit out of it. I genuinely can't comprehend anyone who spends that much then doesn't go okay we need a cohesive plan that keeps old fans happy and gets new fans just by being good.
I remember Brandon Sanderson talking about that. Someone was trying to get rights to one of his books (Emperor's Soul I think) and it was clearly an original work with his character's names slapped on.
That's why he's doing the script for Mistborn. And why he refused to settle for the first offer. He chose to work with Apple TV because they were willing to let him do the script and were willing to allow him creative control.
Other studios... Weren't. And while foundation has issues, it's hard to argue the production value isn't there. Which is the thing Sanderson needs from a studio: a willingness to commit to actually making the show and seeing it through. Amazon has a habit of cancelling shows before they finish. Netflix has a habit of taking forever to get things done, and so on. The list continues.
I don't like everything Apple has done, but they are pretty good compared to the others
As a 40k fan I'm glad it happened. He'll be the angry nerd keeping all the writers(on the 40k show/shows) from trying to completely change all the lore just because reasons.
I remember there was a PR campaign done against Henry about how he was a bully on set and he was making changes to the script causing the show to be bad then the creators of the show made 2 spin offs without Henry and both of them flopped critically and commercially.
Henry is such a gem. Dude is literally one of the most gorgeous men to ever walk to planet and he's actually just a down to earth nerd. He cares about the material and you can tell he wants these IPs brought to life as much as the other fans.
Personally, he's up there with Keanu as just wonderful people who stay uncorrupted by the BS of hollywood.
To be fair, he was a bully on set, but not because he wanted to bully people.
He believed in the original story and it's source material while the writers and producers thought they knew better than him.
He tried to stop them from destroying the show, but as just an actor he had next to no authority but to finish his contract or pay for breaching it and possibly whatever the rest for the show was.
One of the main reasons he made sure he was a producer on the 40k stuff was to prevent it from happening again. In addition with Natalie Viscuso(his girlfriend and mother of his child) also being an executive producer as well as him he has learned about making sure he can get enough control to keep the source material in mind.
Don't get me wrong it looks very controlling, but this is his pet project and he doesn't want to get anything with it wrong.
I don’t know about “controlling” man. It’s not even just passion anymore when you’re just ensuring you will have no active role in wrecking an IP that you genuinely love, like he was contractually forced to with the Witcher.
“Controlling” would be building a dam in a river. Henry be steering a river to stay on course by reinforcing the banks. Only with the latter would you still recognise the river as it was.
But it is controlling. People assuming controlling is always a bad thing. If you are in a vehicle in the driver's seat, you are controlling the vehicle. If you aren't it's irresponsible. It's the same thing if you care about the IP. To let someone else wreck the IP is to give them control.
controlling behaviour, in this sense, has a specific meaning and it is always a bad thing.
it's someone who tries to gain and then abuse control over others. Creating a project and being in control of it before anyone even signs on is not controlling behaviour.
It limits a person’s independence, isolates them from support, and dictates their daily choices through emotional, financial, or physical intimidation.
controlling in this context is not just a word, you were using it with this specific meaning and completely incorrectly here.
No one calls the director of a film a controlling person because they are literally in control, they are supposed to be in control. Controlling behaviour is when people who aren't supposed to be in control try to be in control of other people.
Don't care. He would probably reluctantly agree. When people openly don't care about the source material you got to do what you got to do to get them to listen. They refused so he left.
I’m not sure HC would agree to being a Bully, maybe you have a different definition than the rest of the world or never met a real bully. Speaking up for yourself or the project you are passionate about might be considered assertive but not bullying behaviour.
none of htat looks controlling and talking with the writers and saying this makes no sense and is bad and why are you changing a story taht works with random changes that undermine and make the entire thing collapse on itself is not bullying.
Saying no or saying holy shit can you please stop destroying the show is not bullying.
I’ve never played 40k but I am absolutely fascinated with the lore. I’ve been watching a ton of videos on YouTube about it all.
Dude.
If they get this thing rolling the way it can roll… wheeeew… There is so much content available. At least as far as I can tell by these lore videos that spend a whole hour just explaining the background. It seems like there so much out there and so many potential stories to tell
*Also I really enjoyed the Secret Level stuff - that’s kinda what got me to look it up on YouTube in the first place.
Side note - as a 40k fan do you have any recommendations on how to get into the books? Like where to start and all that. When I google it I’m not really that happy with the articles I find (they all seem like they’re AI generated, honestly)
Too much source material can be a bad thing as well. The Horus heresy alone is like 13 books I think? Many of which are dedicated to specific primarchs and their legions, who were already technically established before the Horus heresy. All those books go into detail on what’s happening in the world and are written in a way that if you have a cursory idea of warhammer you’ll understand (god emperor conquered earth, tricked out the chaos gods, enabled space travel, and then conquered more worlds) but just those 4 things could all have a book written about them and do lmao plus with this many books, you have multiple authors who inevitably contradict certain parts of the others writings. This is all to say it can definitely be done, but with something so expansive as warhammer, and the pacing of shows nowadays only doing 10 episode seasons we could easily be into season 3 5 years from now (if we’re lucky) and still not know all the primarchs/important characters/character building of why what and when the heresy happens. And god forbid if they, for some reason, choose to piecemeal it to us in flashback episodes while setting the show after big E sits on the throne. Like I’m not a writer but I’m incredibly interested in how they handle things like Erebus, the emperor finding all the primarchs (and why the were scattered to begin with), each primarchs characterization and story lines, and the aftermath and fallout of it all in the millennia afterwards
Or I’m completely wrong and they set it in 42000 with passing mentions of the imperium, big e, a primach mention here and there and focus on something like the guardsmen and the war on chaos/orks/eldar or picking a legion and group of marines and going for space battles to the fullest.
Idk, but my main point was that this world has so freaking much that it almost would need a very VERY tight couple of seasons with good overview of the universe to make it palatable for a wider audience
A good starting point for the books (as you say you've got a little background lore) I'd recommend "the infinite and the divine" and the night lords omnibus. Mechanics and The Fall of Cadia are also very good
I'd hold of on Infinite and the Divine for a little bit. A lot of proper nouns and timeline jumps that are difficult to follow on audiobook at least (the only time i can "read"). But a fantastic book though
You generally just start reading any of the fan wiki for 40k and find a faction you like, or just random search for recommended reading.
The best way is to just start. Some context will always be lost on someone new to 40k but in general they do a good job of explaining. I would say if you don't recognize a word or phrase look it up within the context of 40k.
I've always seen people recommend Xenos by Dan Abnett. It explains a lot of common things in the 40k universe to people new to the setting, while being a detective style story told from a basic human perspective.
A lot of things will lack context and if you just search 40k and the word you don't understand it should help.
Eisenhorn: Xenos is the best intro trilogy. Slow burn detective noir that takes its time and doesn't overload you with ten pages of space marines slaughtering everyone.
Whoooa I did not know they're making a 40k show with Henry Cavill. I just started Rogue Trader last week and it's very interesting. My intro to this whole universe and I am enjoying these space nazis. Wish it was fully voiced though 😢
Idk, I read the books after the show came out because I wanted to know how different they actually were and Henry’s take on Geralt is pretty flat. He butted heads with the writers non stop because instead of doing his lines he’d just resort to all that grunting. He was a fan of the games so I can kind of see why he thought he was honoring the source material but book Geralt isn’t some stiff stoic that rarely talks. Most of the content of the books is Geralt talking with people. All to say, the show was doomed lol.
To be fair, Henry "wanted to stick with the source material" while at the same time FUNDAMENTALLY changing Geralt's personality.
In the books and games, Geralt is the talkin'est damn thing you ever heard (to borrow a phrase) whereas Henry's version is all dark and brooding and quiet.
It's all very reasonable if you think about the fact that the primary goal is money:
it's drastically cheaper to hire the new people
the new people are also not going to get paid to spend a month or two immersed in the lore
no one is going to say "yea we don't know wtf we are doing and will do a shittier job" so of course the company and the employees are going to rationalize a "new take"
a lot of people will buy anyway because the IP is popular
I've been seeing this same shit happen in IT for decades. Fire experienced knowledgeable but highly paid people, replace them with low paying fresh faces, or outsource. In the long term quality and satisfaction suffers, but in the short term you are increasing profits.
No way Pedro pascal and Bella Ramsey would be cheaper than the voice actor equivalent. And that would probably be the case for most adaptations since the actors they cast are usually bigger names then the voice actors
Yeah, but famous names bring the normies. All my love to Troy Baker, people who are not into video games have no idea who he is. For TV and film you need mass appeal.
I'm not saying this happens every time, but a lot of times these writers have some idea for a story in their head, and they want so bad to see their original story turned reality they just change the names of characters and locations of their story to fit whatever the property it is they are writing for, rather than try to come up with something truly catered to the property, at least that's how it seems to be.
Especially fumbling a PERFECT casting of Henry Cavill as Geralt. Like, he knows the source material and is actually passionate about the role, and they just fucked it so bad.
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